…For the Bush administration to send a representative like John Bolton to the UN is an open insult. The man is a consistent denigrator of the organisation and seems to have nothing positive or hopeful to say about it. Bolton failed to get the US Senate’s endorsement in part because of his record of contempt for the world body. He once suggested the UN building could be demolished and “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”…
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I get a little annoyed at the bad press the United Nations is receiving lately and there seems to be no one willing to go in to bat for the organisation. The current US administration has since its inauguration been waging a public relations war against the United Nations and it seems to be winning.
The UN security council is basically a rich man’s club reflecting the ethnic, cultural and power imbalances of a world governed by power, not people. It has 15 members of which 5 are permanent with powers of veto, the remaining ten are rotating positions. Only one permanent member, China, is a developing nation, the rest are rich, white, Christian countries which claim to value justice and democracy, but they dominate potentially the most powerful forum on earth while representing only 9 per cent of the world’s people.
Currently there is only 1 member of the security council that is a Muslim or Arab country – Qatar – although Ghana has a 45 per cent Muslim population.
No Muslim countries are permanent members, despite Muslims being a fifth of the world’s population.
There is an unofficial, unelected, de facto 6th permanent member of the security council that sits by proxy. This is Israel which uses its lap dog, America, to veto anything that is not in Israel’s interests.
Roughly 4.4 billion people (71% of the world’s population), are not represented by any permanent member and so have no power of veto.
Contrary to the negative image portrayed, the UN has for decades been doing great work all over the world. And when the US does decide to take action towards international peace, it’s usually through the UN that it attempts to put this into practice.
I accept that there is corruption and inefficiency in the UN and this needs to be weeded out, but a lot of this is due to the frustration and dispiritedness experienced within an organisation which ultimately can only do what the rich and powerful nations allow because of its structure.
The monitoring of Iraq’s oil-for-food program was one of the UN’s greatest failings, but once again a rich nation – Australia – was the prime beneficiary. It secured lucrative wheat sales by slipping Saddam Hussein’s regime a tidy little US$230 million under the table and under the noses of the UN watchdogs. And how was this news received in Australia when it all came out? The Australian Tax Office is allowing the Australian Wheat Board to claim the bribe as a tax deduction – so who’s corrupt?
For the Bush administration to send a representative like John Bolton to the UN is an open insult. The man is a consistent denigrator of the organisation and seems to have nothing positive or hopeful to say about it. Bolton failed to get the US Senate’s endorsement in part because of his record of contempt for the world body. He once suggested the UN building could be demolished and “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”.
In 1994 Mr Bolton said: “There’s no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.”
Mr Bolton would like to see reform at the United Nations, but his vision of the future is a little bit . well I’ll let you decide: “If I were redoing the Security Council today, I’d have one permanent member because that’s the real distribution of power in the world.”
It could be argued that if the Bush administration has such naked contempt for the United Nations and for global democratic processes, then it should resign America’s membership, and that its continued participation is a sign of its own weakness.
Written by Surya Coapy, whose writings can be found at http://surya.newsvine.com/
